


Space-Netflix and Chill

by OhNoNotAnotherFakeGeekGirl



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Ace!Vaughn, First time (with each other), Friends With Benefits, I blame you entirely, IN SPACE, M/M, Making Out, Masturbation, Netflix and Chill, Tron - Freeform, also shout out to schrodingers rufus for unintentionally providing the title to this monstrosity, doughnuts, failed attempt to 69, failed blowjobs, gayperion, hi mum, hi there, if it turns out to be canon then someone at gearbox is reading my smut, if that's the case, incredibly nerdy sex, is there even a thing called space netflix in Borderlands, lengthy discussion concerning masturbation aids habits and sex toys, my first published smut, pan!Rhys, please don't read this, use of masturbation aids, use of sex toys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:23:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6104781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhNoNotAnotherFakeGeekGirl/pseuds/OhNoNotAnotherFakeGeekGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day after work whilst pigging out on Space-Krispy Kreme, Rhys makes a Freudian slip in front of Vaughn that changes the course of the following evening, and likely many afterwards, forever. A revealing exploration of the less-chartered waters of bromance- bros-with-benefits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Doughnuts and Chill

Being sexually attracted to one’s best friend is much like navigating a golf course with a small number of mines cleverly concealed beneath it. Largely a pleasant experience, but there is always an element of trepidation once one’s path strays too close to a suspicious-looking lump under the grass. Rhys had been navigating this minefield with Vaughn for the past few years and was, in his mind, rather adept when it came to avoiding situations and conversational matter that could expose the fact that he had a hard-on for his best friend. In actuality what he had been was extremely lucky, a fact that was about to become startlingly, graphically apparent.  
  
Rhys and Vaughn were sitting on the former’s long, sharply-angled couch, a box of half-a-dozen Hyperion-brand doughnuts sitting across their laps. The lid of the box was resting on Rhys’s knee, the yellow-tinted cellophane panel offering a choice view of his long, noodle-like legs, one of which, unlike its twin, was wearing pinstripes. This window was slowly becoming encrusted with crumbs as he methodically nibbled away at a doughnut covered in rainbow sprinkles, held there by a sticky layer of lolly-pink, imitation-strawberry flavoured icing. The rest of the sugar-encrusted box was splayed across the lap of the diminutive Vaughn, whose appetite, ironically, rivalled that of a pack of starving skags. He was making quick, messy work of an espresso and chocolate-flavoured doughnut, cramming half of the glazed ring into his mouth with his right hand, a salted caramel-filled doughnut awaiting the same fate in his left hand.  
  
“Rhys, I think I wanna get laid.” Vaughn mused sluggishly around a sodden wad of half-chewed doughnut.  
Rhys had just bitten into the frosted part of his own doughnut and was so taken aback by his friend’s uncharacteristic statement that he had to devote a few seconds to processing it before he could resume chewing.  
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m not still asexual,” Vaughn elaborated between mouthfuls, “but I dunno, I’m kinda… bored.”  
“How are you bored?” Rhys asked. “I thought you preferred not… having… sex.”  
At ‘sex’, a forgotten and very sexually frustrated part of Rhys’s electronics-laced brain pricked up, prompting a small lump to begin snowballing in his throat, and his pants to grow ever so slightly tighter. Rhys tried to clear the former with another spiky mouthful of sprinkled doughnut. He failed.  
“I never really called it a preference. I mean sure, I’m happy not having sex, I don’t need it to be happy, I just want to have some… experiences. Sexy experiences. Like taking up a new hobby or something. A sexy hobby. Doing something new.”  
“Doing some _one_ new!” Rhys added, grinning wryly before biting off a new hunk of the chewy pastry. He and Vaughn both snorted blithely in unison. “Well,” Rhys continued, “How about you and I hit up a club, find you a nice girl, or guy, or non-binary person to hook up with? That sound good?”  
Vaughn made an unsure sound, a closed-mouth groan. "Rhys, you've known me since college. I've never been the type of guy who goes home with strangers." he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.  
"Doesn't mean it's not worth trying," Rhys slurred around a fresh mouthful of doughnut. "Drunk one-night stands are a one-way ticket to wild and crazy sex, bro."  
"With someone I've never met before? Drunk? This could be really dangerous! This is Hyperion, everyone here has pushed at least one person under the bus to be here. Usually literally! What if my kidneys get harvested? O-or my skin gets peeled off and sold on the black market to some... human pelt collector? Oh God, what if I'm so good in bed that they taxidermy me to use as a human sex doll?!" he cried loudly, voice shooting up an octave and hyperventilating as though he had sprinted a literal marathon after his runaway imagination.  
"Jesus Vaughn, calm down!" Rhys reassured him. "You're not gonna lose your kidneys. Or your skin."  
"You don't know that." Vaughn huffed. Much as Rhys would have liked to have reassured him otherwise, Vaughn was right. Rhys wracked his brain to come up with something else, trying not to pay attention to the fact that Vaughn's pale, freckled forearm had bumped against his leg, and failing.  
  
"Uhm... How about we get Yvette to set you up with someone?" Rhys suggested. Vaughn furrowed his brow sceptically, his straight, thick eyebrows lining up perfectly with his glasses frames. "No, really!" Rhys persisted, voice suddenly climbing an octave higher than he would have preferred. "Remember how she set up Kate from R &D with... Geez, what's her name? Y'know, from HR."  
"Rhonda?" offered Vaughn.  
"Yeah, her."  
"I dunno, man. Do I really wanna date someone? I don't think so. I'm looking for someone to fool around with, not someone to... get _married_ and _have kids_ with. Feels wrong to try for the second one when you only want to do the first one." Vaughn's words sounded as uncomfortable as he looked, squirming on the couch, sending a few loose crumbs that weren't glued with sugar to the interior of the doughnut box tumbling.  
Rhys opened and shut his mouth blindly, searching for something to say, but Vaughn continued regardless. "Yeah... I dunno. The way I see it, if I'm gonna have sex with someone, I want to... see eye-to-eye with them."  
Rhys let out a solitary syllable of laughter as he bit off another doughnut piece. "Dude, you're 5'2". Short of scooting around on a scissor lift for the rest of your life, you're never gonna see eye-to-eye with anybody."  
"Figuratively, jackass!" Vaughn laughed, punching Rhys lightly on the yellow and white exoskeleton making up his bionic upper arm. "I don't wanna be in a porno or love story, man. I wanna go out there and get laid, sure, but without the bullshit, y'know? Whoever it is I do it with, I want them to be someone I trust. Someone I'm comfortable around. Someone I can talk shit with afterwards. Like...I dunno, a best friend."  
  
At that moment, Rhys could feel time stopping altogether. He felt his consciousness recede in a split second, leaving him to powerlessly observe his own and Vaughn's actions from within. Before he could stop himself the words "So... basically me, then?" had made a break for it straight through his lips to violently expose themselves on the empty, recycled space-station air. His eyes widened, his stomach turned to stone, his pulse hammered a loud tattoo in his chest, neck and ears as though it wanted out of his body altogether when he realised, far too late, what he had just said. The proverbial mine had exploded.  
After that, what happened next had been so vivid, so fast-paced, that Rhys was unsure of whether or not he had been dreaming it.  
He remembered the way Vaughn blinked owlishly in surprise, and then a smile creeping into his face, as he softly chuckled, "That actually sounds ideal."  
  
Unsure of what to do next, Rhys forced himself to laugh along, a nervous bluffing chortle as though they had simply shared a joke, which expired into a slow, erratic splutter before stopping with a groaning sigh. He pulled a hand over his gelled-stiff hair and turned away, too afraid to look his friend in the face. The seconds of silence pulled slowly away like hours as he frantically yet fecklessly tried and failed to come up with any sort of display to defuse the slowly intensifying, awkward situation. The air in the room felt tense and pressurised, like he was inside an overfilled balloon on the very verge of popping. It felt electric, as though said balloon had been rubbed very vigorously on a woollen sweater and had been placed very near to a metal filing cabinet.  
Vaughn broke the silence by setting the box on the floor beside them and turning towards his friend, wedging one foot under his thin thigh, leaving the other leg dangling over the side of the couch, not quite long enough to touch the floor.  
"You weren't kidding, were you, Rhys." Vaughn sighed, placing a small, warm hand on his friend's hunched left shoulder. Rhys couldn't stand the thought of looking at Vaughn, fearful of what he might see.  
"I'm so sorry, bro-" He started to stammer like a piece of software with a slow-running vocal module, but was quickly shut up by catching a peripheral glimpse of Vaughn's face, which had a soft-eyed smile stretched across it. Rhys felt his heart melt.  
"Don't apologise, bro. I wasn't kidding either." Vaughn replied, punctuating his confession with a mischievous smirk. Rhys felt a blush creeping hotly upwards from his chest, filling his neck and in face. His mouth was slackly ajar, the left corner ticking upwards as he replied with the only syllable his oversexed brain was capable of producing.  
"Huh."

  
Everything after that was the kind of timeless, soft, warm, blur that's closely related to the type one feels when dreaming peacefully whilst wrapped in a bed of soft, woollen blankets. Rhys heard "Wanna make out?" from Vaughn, and there was barely enough time for Rhys to splutter out a "Yeah!" before the gap between them closed and the world dissolved until there was only kissing.  
Rhys's eyes screwed tightly shut enough to make the hard, plastic-casing of his bionic left eye bite into the interior of his eyelid and the meat of his right eye compress until he was seeing galaxies. His hands scrambled and quickly found Vaughn's waist and thigh, pulling the other man into his lap so he could feel as much of his warm, compact form against his own as possible. Vaughn shifted to straddle Rhys's lap with no resistance, and softly coiled his arms about his shoulders.  
With his eyes shut, Rhys could feel Vaughn's fine, soft hair tickling his forehead, a pair of rectangular glasses frames digging into the bridge of his aquiline nose, Vaughn's large round button nose breathing hotly into his cheek, and Vaughn's scratchy, squared goatee rubbing against his clean-shaven chin, all framing their mouths, which were crushed together in a deep, chaste kiss. A few deep, slow, ravenous breaths later, their jaws slid open almost in unison, allowing their tongues to collide and writhe against each other. Both friends shivered and sighed into the unfamiliar, intimate, exhilarating contact. Rhys breathed deep and savoured the fact that he could taste the lingering notes of Vaughn's coffee, chocolate and caramel doughnuts mixing with his own imitation strawberry aftertaste, crashing with something hot and faintly salty that could only be described as Vaughn, something which drew a soft sound from Rhys and prompted him to lick deeper into his friend's mouth.  
Rhys's warm, slightly sweating left hand had managed to slither its way under Vaughn's shirt, exploring every bone of Vaughn's tight ribcage which rolled sensuously with his deep, hungry breathing. The pad of his thumb found and traced gentle circles over his nipple. Vaughn gasped, before grinning slyly against his lips in kind and grinding his narrow hips into Rhys's sensitive crotch, drawing from him a wanton moan.  
  
Rhys was utterly and entirely engrossed, attention transfixed, practically drowning in his best friend's heated, passionate kisses. He felt like he could spend hours, days this way, indulging in the long-desired sensation of his best friend's lips dragging wetly and sensuously over his own.  
Finally breaking the kiss took more effort than if he was instead pulling carpet off the floor barehanded, but he relished the opportunity to explore Vaughn's jawline and neck with frantic, ravenous kisses. Vaughn leaned into the sensation and hummed contentedly, one hand pressing against Rhys’s ribcage, the other curled loosely at the nape of his neck, probing stiff, gelled locks.  
  
Suddenly, the dice-sized computer module at the corner of Vaughn’s glasses frames buzzed urgently, filling Vaughn’s green-tinted lenses with the soft orange glow of a tiny notification. Vaughn cracked his eyes open a fraction to look at the offending text whilst Rhys busied himself teasing Vaughn’s prominent Adam’s apple with his lips.  
With a sigh, Vaughn dragged himself off of Rhys’s lap, lightly slapping his shoulder as a signal to stop. Rhys looked on, dumbfounded, lips plush and swollen, chin shiny and pink from where it had ground itself raw against Vaughn’s goatee.  
“I gotta go dude, Henderson’s echoed me a metric crapton of paperwork to proofread. I swear that guy won’t even order two things off a menu without making me check if the math is right…” Vaughn said nonchalantly, tucking his shirt back into his pants in the manner of a man who had been doing literally anything other than making out with his best friend.  
“Oh, uh, sure.” Rhys replied shakily, taking the discarded doughnut box to his small apartment’s kitchen garbage chute on trembling legs.  
“If you want, we can continue this tomorrow?” Vaughn offered, slinging his work satchel over his shoulder and hopping on one foot as he squeezed his shoes back on. Rhys nodded dumbly, still reeling.  
“Oh, great!” Vaughn beamed brightly. “How ‘bout I come over at, say, 8:30? Make it an evening of Space-Netflix and chill, eh?” he offered, waggling his eyebrows and making pistol fingers as he backed towards the door.  
“Y-yeah man, sounds great.” Rhys stammered, smiling bashfully as he opened his apartment door for his friend.  
“Rad, bro, it’s a date!” Vaughn grinned. “See you tomorrow, bro!” he chirruped, patting Rhys happily on the bicep before swaggering away.  
  
Rhys spent the next three minutes after the door closed panting with pent-up lust, neck and back pushed to the wall in desperation as his hands wrung a furious, dirty orgasm from his loins.  
  
He spent the next few hours afterwards shuddering with his head swimming blindly in panic over what had just occurred, frequently muttering in various intonations;  
“What the fuck just happened? What did I just do?!"


	2. Chill? What Chill?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day of Rhys and Vaughn's organised "Space-Netflix And Chill" session, in which Rhys pours as much effort and beauty products into his appearance as Patrick Bateman on a "laze around at home in my jammies" day, and does a lot of intense and emotional soul searching- replete with a cameo from a certain lunch thief.

Rhys awoke that morning to his screaming alarm, lanky limbs twisting in his tangled sheets as he struggled to adjust to consciousness. He patted haphazardly around the immediate area off the edge of his bed with his splayed left hand, feeling blindly for the alarm's off button, eventually finding and quieting it. However long he had slept last night, it clearly wasn't enough rest to get through the day with, a sentiment Rhys demonstrated by rolling over in protest and nuzzling into his pillow. The air smelled and tasted deliciously soporific, a blend of slept-in sheets and his own scent that had seeped slowly into the fluffy synthetic batting over the years Rhys had been using it.

Without warning, his eye counter-protested by way of an intense burst of a vibration, sending a rattle through his very skull and instantly snapping Rhys out of his effort to bring on a second bout of unconsciousness with a yell. He had programmed his computerised left eye to set a vibrating alarm whenever his eye movement tracked too rapidly, indicating slumber, within an hour of his alarm going off in the morning. Whilst unpleasant, it was at least an effective counter to oversleeping, and always enough to make Rhys finally roll out of bed and pad barefoot to his desk, where his robotic right arm lay attached to its charging dock. The red and white lights along his forearm, indicating the current battery percentage, faded languidly on and off, as though the prosthetic itself was sleeping peacefully. Rhys unplugged it from the charger with a faint click and manoeuvred the hefty false limb over to his shoulder socket. He clicked it into place blindly, rolling his arm around in a wide circle, then flexing his elbow, wrist, and each of his fingers into wilful use as he had done every morning since he first taken the prosthesis out of its foam-lined case.

Rhys's early-morning train of thought consisted a list of commands, which he followed silently and obediently in his morning routine. _Bathroom, stretch, piss, wash hands, wash face, brush teeth, scratch ass, yawn._

Rhys blinked blearily at his reflection in the mirror, and slicked his hair back into order with several excessively generous palmfuls of hair gel. He rubbed a more respectable quantity of moisturiser into his face and neck, examining his skin like a priceless artefact. Whilst Rhys's skin was remarkably clear- nearly flawless, in fact, an attribute he often arrogantly credited to a rigorous skincare regime - a spot of makeup to cover errant blemishes that occasionally reared up here or there never went amiss.

Even despite the careful application of eye cream pre-slumber Rhys's eye sockets were rimmed bruise-purple, an indicator of how little he'd slept, although the reason why wasn't immediately apparent. It was nothing, however, that a dab of concealer and a layer of powder to set couldn't fix. The very end of Rhys's chin was discoloured a blotchy pinkish-red, and a little tender to the touch, not unlike a mild carpet burn. Again, nothing that a little concealer couldn't hide, and something he was proud to say was a little experienced with. It wasn't the first time, after all, that the area around Rhys's mouth- among _other_ locations on his body - had been decorated with friction burns, the rosy mementos of prolonged making out or vigorous oral sex sessions from the night before. Rhys smirked into the mirror, his memory finally catching up with him. _Oh yeah, I made out with Vaughn last night._

Alongside the physical burn his friend's beard had left on the tip of his chin, the ghost of Vaughn's kisses had come back to haunt Rhys, leaving their impressions on his lips and tongue again. Unfortunately, following close behind was a creeping coldness, the question that had caused him to lose so much sleep in the first place.

_Did I just turn my best friend into my boyfriend?_

Rhys meandered through the remainder of his morning routine, lost in thought.

_Deodorant, socks, shirt, tie, pants, adjust balls, belt, boots, vest, kitchen._

Rhys thought about his previous romantic partners, the people who at various points throughout his life he had fallen head-over-heels in love with. Amongst the fond memories of amorous romps, caring gestures, and conversations inspiring vaguely disgusted “get a room” looks from people in the vicinity, the thing he remembered most about being with his past boyfriends and girlfriends was the fondness, the deeply-held admiration, the fact that every glance at the people he had loved flooded his chest with a singing warmth. A flood that never came when he looked at Vaughn.

Vaughn was the man Rhys took a break from the rest of his life to spend time with, he was the audience who let out “aww”s and “oooh”s and laughter on cue when Rhys gushed or told a story, who listened, empathised with and withstood stood Rhys’s bitching for hours on end when things went wrong, and who offered food, booze, sci fi movie nights and co-op video games if Rhys needed to take his mind off things. Sure, his boyfriends and girlfriends did that too, and that’s part of what he loved so much about them, but Vaughn was the real rock- lovers came and went, but Vaughn was always there.

In a way, Rhys supposed that this steadfast compatibility was the reason he should absolutely be dating Vaughn, but there was something in that sentiment that felt shockingly, unsettlingly wrong, and the more that Rhys thought about Vaughn as his boyfriend instead of his best friend, the more it made him squirm. Keeping a romance running had obligations, unlike friendship- being part of an item meant work and constant devotion to the fact they were, well, _an item_. Keeping up appearances. Rhys didn't mind that so much in general, but around Vaughn, it felt like an act of deceit. Just because they'd been friends for years didn't mean they'd last anywhere near as long in a romantic relationship- and who knows if they'd even remain friends after that. The fact that Rhys might just lose his best friend sent a cold jolt through his heart- there was nothing for it, it just wouldn't work.

But why, Rhys postulated as he opened the shiny foil packaging of the sugary mass-produced apple strudel and slid the cold pastry into the toaster, did kissing him feel so... right?

_Keys, wallet, hallway, front door, stumble on pavement, shuttle._

Rhys continued to ponder this dilemma around wet mouthfuls of lukewarm toaster strudel on the shuttle to work. How to talk about this to Vaughn? Could he talk about this to Vaughn? Would approaching this subject make Vaughn hate him? Was there any way to get out of this and go back to the way things were?

As soon as Rhys slid into his seat, his cubicle felt uncomfortable. The walls weren't wide apart enough to provide adequate breathing room. He couldn't sit still for more than three seconds. He adjusted his ass in the seat, his elbows on the armrests of his chair, the height of the swivel chair up and down within fractions of a millimetre. Pinpoint focus on the words he was meant to be reading was impossible to achieve, let alone stringing each sentence of the text into a coherent message for his brain to understand. The lines of code he often tasked himself with writing didn't fare much better, each sequence of characters not conveying themselves any meaning. The bulk of Rhys's brainspace had been taken entirely up by his new conundrum, and how he was going to explain it to the only other person he was halfway comfortable with bringing it up with.

Rhys couldn’t take it anymore- he was utterly unable to give the work he was being paid to do any attention until he could find an opportunity to talk to Yvette about his problem. Flicking his palm upwards and activating his prosthetic hand’s inbuilt echo device, he quickly found her in his call folder and echoed her. He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose between his left thumb and forefinger. Each second between hitting "call" and her picking up felt like an hour draining away right before his eyes.

* * *

"I don't understand what your problem is, Rhys." Yvette said bluntly around a mouthful of takeaway pad-thai that Rhys had paid for in exchange for her listening to his problems. "You've been high-key into Vaughn for... basically since as long as I've known you two, and Vaughn's totally up for it- isn't this basically what you wanted?"

Rhys let out a frustrated huff of air and flopped the upper half of his body onto the lunchroom table in exasperation. _What a waste of top-dollar Thai takeout._

Yvette rolled her eyes and set her takeout container back down onto the table. "You really want my advice?" She said, quirking an immaculately-groomed eyebrow and jabbing in Rhys’s direction with her chopsticks, "I say that you should just forget about your neurosis, and do what you obviously need to do most- get your nerdy freak on already!"

Rhys groaned into his palms, propping his torso upright on his elbows.

"I know you've got your hangups, but now that you and Vaughn won't be getting your Unresolved Sexual Tension on anymore, think of the benefits! We'll finally be able to focus completely on conquering this company!" Yvette said a little too happily, and in a manner that made Rhys hear "I" instead of "we."

Rhys's facial expression was the picture of despair, as though he had woken up that morning to find a basket of dead puppies on his doorstep with an eviction notice tied to it.

"Aww, c'mon Rhys, I can't have my two favourite boys stuck in this itty-bitty widdle high-school-drama cul-de-sac forever when we're trying to take over a multitrillion dollar arms company, can I?" Yvette simpered into his ear.

"No..." Rhys sighed hesitantly.

"Good." Yvette replied smugly. She clapped a hand to Rhys's shoulder, and in a confident and encouraging voice that wouldn't sound out of place in a vintage piece of Hyperion propaganda, "Now go forth and give that little nerd the Netflix and Chill of his LIFE!"

* * *

Rhys sat nude in his bathroom at 6:15 pm, doing his best impression of The Thinker, in an effort to make his outside appearance match the inward feeling of being hardened on the outside yet cold and blank in the middle. Nothing could make him work up the enthusiasm to approach the night ahead with a smile on his face and a bulge in his pants. That little sexually-frustrated goblin in his brain that had yearned for Vaughn to a debilitating degree for so long and _started this whole mess in the first place_ had disappeared altogether. _Good thing too,_ Rhys thought, _because if I ever find it again I’m strangling it to death, stuffing its mangled corpse into a tennis ball, and then firing said tennis ball directly into Elpis’s ass crack._ The room felt sealed, the situation inescapable. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was no getting out of the situation short of firing himself out of one of Helios's many airlocks, and whether it was because he didn’t know how to escape it or because he didn’t want to let Vaughn down, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was something to do with two of Yvette’s co-workers from Requisitions strolling past his cubicle, flashing him the thumbs up and wishing him luck for that evening. God, he couldn’t even stomach looking at his echo to see if Vaughn had messaged him. _Literally._ He felt like he was going to be sick. With that, Rhys finally wrenched his ass away from the toilet seat to continue with the task in front of him- preparing his body and home for the night ahead.

No manner of deep, controlled breathing would relax the grim set of Rhys’s jaw as he shaved off his stubble in long, slow, measured strokes. The exfoliants, soaps, and perfumed moisturisers he massaged deeply into his skin in circles couldn’t unspool the tension in his muscles. He scrubbed his scalp raw with shampoo, as though his hair was infested with fire ants. With a sullen expression, Rhys dressed himself in socks and matching underwear fresh from the dryer, comfortable navy slacks, and a button-down shirt that caressed his skin as he moved, but did nothing to disguise the rigidity of his shoulders. The sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and the top two buttons were left artfully undone, exposing his collarbones, and the tops of the broad, blue tattoos that disappeared under his shirt and ran thickly in curved patterns along the left side of his torso.

Far from the exciting, meditative task it had been in the past, preparing his apartment was as useless at soothing Rhys’s nerves as receiving a severed penis in the mail with the words “you’re next” carved into it. The way he passionlessly cleaned the apartment, adjusted the lighting, and changed his bedlinen, one could’ve sworn that Rhys was instead preparing for a surprise visit from a puritan great aunt on “cocaine and hookers” night. 8:27 PM. Vaughn would be here any minute. Swallowing dryly, he clawed another fist-sized gob of hair gel out of its tub, and slicked his hair back. Despite being dressed and made up for maximum faux-effortless allure, his stance and facial expression betrayed the fact that Rhys was just plain terrified.

Quickly washing his hands of the sticky fluid, he dried his hands and hunched over the rim of the sink, allowing his fingers to build up an unpleasant, nervous clamminess of their own. The silence was broken by the sound of the doorbell, a sharp ringing tone that sounded like the bastard lovechild of a glockenspiel and a gunshot. Rhys released the breath he’d been holding, drew in another, and pulled himself up to his full height. An exhale brought his shoulders to relax into gentle slopes. He quirked a corner of his mouth and cocked his eyebrows into a cool, seductive smirk that couldn’t quite conceal the touch of worry around his eyes, before leaving to greet his friend.

A little too quickly, Rhys opened the door to reveal Vaughn standing there with a broad, hopeful grin on his face. The party-sized accountant hadn’t put nearly as much cultivated effort into his appearance as his data mining cohort had, and had just thrown on a pair of baggy, worn jeans that were being held up on his narrow hips by hopes and dreams, and an ill-fitting loose Hackathon t-shirt that he’d owned for more years than most people own their waffle irons. His hair was still visibly damp from the shower, and even from here Rhys could smell the soap still clinging to his skin. Slung from his right shoulder and resting low against his hip was a heavy-looking satchel, filled with overnight clothes and who knows what else, that made him lean to the right in a charmingly lopsided manner. He brandished two boxes of pizza and a large bottle of soda, and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Who ordered sausage?”

Vaughn’s cheesy line caught Rhys off guard, and he smiled and laughed for a few seconds, beckoning his friend inside before a wash of cold crossed his face and a tight knot wrenched through his stomach, causing his facial expression to blanch the exact shade of yellowish-white as curdled milk. His throat felt tight and hot, as though every word on his mind was battering against it and trying to escape in a stream of word vomit. He stumbled listlessly to the kitchen and gripped the sides of the kitchen sink for support.

“Oh shit, bro, you okay?” he asked, setting his bag on the floor by the couch and letting the pizzas and soda cool on the counter.

Rhys only managed to wrap his lips around an “I-” before an acrid sting of heat gushed into the back of his throat, and with a few spluttering gags, he began to gracelessly puke his guts out into the sink. Wave after wave of nausea went tearing through his abdomen before the world finally went quiet, leaving him spent, staring into a pool of his own stomach contents, his knuckles white from gripping the counter. Long strings of drool clung to his lips and dangled over the acidic-smelling mess, a layer of cooling sweat adorning his neck and hairline.

A hand suddenly appeared into his line of sight, holding a damp hand towel, and its owner’s voice- Vaughn’s voice- softly edged its way in behind it. “Shit, bro. If you were feeling sick, you should’ve given me a heads-up. I mean, I’d still come over- but maybe it’d be with some ginger ale and crackers instead. And not to Netflix-and-chill.”

Rhys took the towel and began administering gentle, cooling dabs to his face, trying to will his tired jaw into life. “I-I’m so sorry, Vaughn. I can’t do this.” His legs slowly gave out on him, and he slowly descended into a sitting position, slumped with his back resting against the cupboard.

“Pff, you’ve got nothing to apologise for.” Vaughn said, clambering onto the counter opposite so he could rummage around for a glass. “If you feel too sick, we don’t have to have sex. That’s fine with me, so long as you’re okay. We can do this some other time.”

Vaughn climbed down from the counter and wandered back over to the sink, glass in hand. He turned the faucet on, filling the glass and letting the water wash away Rhys’s puke. As if on cue, Rhys’s eyes began welling up with tears. “No- it- it’s not that. It- it’s something else.” He stammered frustratedly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Vaughn crouched down beside him, offering him the glass, but once he saw Rhys’s distraught expression, his face softened with concern, and he folded himself into a sitting position. “Something serious? Shit dude, tell me.”

Rhys opened his mouth to speak, but all he could manage was a strangled croak before emotion overpowered him and he started to cry in earnest. Vaughn set the glass down and hooked an arm behind Rhys’s neck, pulling him into a hug. Rhys went down with no resistance, arms curling tightly around Vaughn’s slim frame.

Vaughn whispering “It’s okay, bro, let’s hug this out. Let it all out.” Was all that was needed to issue forth full-scale wails from Rhys, and the pair remained entwined in a cramped position with his chin nestled in the crook of his shoulder for what felt like a very long time.

Eventually, Rhys’s crying subsided into the occasional staccato sob. Without breaking the hug, he began to move his aching jaw experimentally, and eventually started to speak, each pause for breath marked with a croaking, hiccupping intake of air.

“Yesterday might’ve been the biggest mistake of my life. It’s something I thought I wanted, but I didn’t think about. For so long, I’ve had this _huge_ stinking crush on you. And I knew you didn’t feel the same way about me, so I hid it. For… so long. For years. And then… And then yesterday happened, and we started making out, I was just... It was so great, it felt so right, but when you left, I started to think about it. And I mean… look, the sex isn’t an issue. It’s everything else. I’m so confused, man. I love… I love you, I guess? I mean, that’s why we’re best friends, right, and there’s nothing to say we _wouldn't_  make great boyfriends, but… If we end up dating, I’m scared things are gonna change so much that we won’t be bros anymore. I’m afraid of you and me getting sappy. In a lovey-dovey way? And it just… makes me feel sick even thinking about it. I don’t want to lose the old us, dude. I don’t want to lose you as my bro. God, I sound so stupid.” Rhys said brokenly, before words failed him again and he resumed crying.

“It’s all okay. You’ll be okay.” Vaughn urged him on, gently rocking them both back and forth and rubbing circles into his friends back while a wet patch of snot and tears blossomed on his shoulder. Rhys could feel Vaughn’s face scrunching up against his ear and his arms constricting around his shoulders, before he heard him take a slow, deep breath. “So… Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here dude, but what I got from that was, since we’ve made plans to get a little more… up-close and personal with each other, shall we say- you’re afraid we’ll lose our friendship if our bromance turns into a romance?” Vaughn said, cultivating an atmosphere of calm with his voice. Rhys felt his breathing slow down, and the tightness in his chest unspool somewhat, leaving a cold, sharp, hollowness.

“Y-yeah. Exactly.” Rhys murmured his reply in a trembling voice, and pulled away to take a sip from the glass of water, pausing for a moment to wash the snot and bile out of his throat before Vaughn’s grip tightened again, planting Rhys’s face headlong into his friend’s chest.

“Ahh. Okay. It’s all okay. We’re good.” Vaughn replied quietly, and probably more for his own comfort than Rhys’s, as he had managed to hide all but the barest hint of a tremor in his steady voice. “I mean, the feeling’s mutual.”

Rhys sniffled in bafflement. “What?”

Vaughn’s hug slackened and he pulled away, arms slumping at his sides. He looked sheepishly up at Rhys, his gaze aimed not quite at his face, but instead at some point on the wall behind him. Vaughn’s eyes had taken on a slightly misty quality to match their shade of greyish-blue, his eyelids and sclerae rimmed with a shade of ‘I’ve just suppressed a crying fit’ red. “I mean… I don’t want our bromance turning into a romance either. I love you too, with all my heart, but my feelings have never been romantic. I’ve just never seen you as a boyfriend, and, to be honest, picturing us like that feels wrong, on like... _every_ level. That’s not who we are, and to me it sounds like you feel the same. And that’s a _huge_ relief, dude. Knowing we’re on the same page.”

Rhys half-exhaled and half-chuckled his relief. “Thank god. But what about making out? About sex?”

Vaughn's smile and laugh echoed his own, relieved and breathless. “Dude, I said I wanted to get laid, not find a date. Us making out or having sex whenever doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice our friendship, dude.” He said, sniffling a little before scraping his nose against his forearm. Rhys made a wobbly sound caught between disgust at his friend’s almost juvenile gesture and confusion at his friend’s statement. “It’s really not that hard, if you think about it.” Vaughn answered.

“Haha, _hard_.” Rhys scoffed on reflex, before being met with a playful punch on the right arm which, not for the first time, left Rhys giggling and Vaughn wincing and clutching his battered hand at the knuckles.

“I’m serious! God, you sound like _Vasquez_ right now. I mean, it’s just an _action_ , right, remember how I put it yesterday? It would be just like picking up a new hobby.”

“Like, a hobby, hobby? Like playing video games, or art, or… naked space-fencing?”

“Yeah, exactly like that!” Vaughn blurted enthusiastically. “In theory, it’d be adding “having hot, steamy, amazing sex” to the list of stuff we already do together!” Vaughn said, mock groaning and then jumping to his knees, biting his lower lip and rhythmically grinding his hips against the air. Rhys guffawed, and for the first time that night, he felt completely unashamed at doing so.

“I think I’d like that. Having sex with you every once in a while, along with everything else- the normal stuff.”

Vaughn’s face lit up, and he slung an arm around Rhys’s shoulder, offering a drawn-out, quiet “Yeaaaaaaaah!” of approval. “Bros forever?”

Rhys nodded. “Bros forever,” He echoed confidently, “Now with more boning!” He added in the cheesy cocked-eyebrowed braggadocio of a slick salesman, slipping his cybernetic arm around Vaughn’s waist and pulling him close. His eyes closed peacefully for a moment, and when he opened them, Vaughn had the beginnings of a shit-eating grin.

“Shouldn’t that be… bro-ning?” He added, waggling his eyebrows suggestively before bursting into a cackle.

“God _dammit,_ Vaughn.” Rhys groaned, rolling his head to one side so it rested against Vaughn’s, and with a sigh, allowed himself to lazily nuzzle against Vaughn’s hair, and savour the soapy smell still clinging to his soft, half-dry locks. Without thinking, Rhys’s eyes slid closed and he dipped his head lower, aiming for Vaughn’s lips, a gesture which was met with a scoff of resistance and a palm pushing his face away.

“Augh, no, not if you have puke-breath!” Vaughn groaned with disgust.

Rhys cupped a hand to his nose and mouth and immediately drew back from the putrid smell of his own breath. “I… totally do have puke breath.” Rhys affirmed sheepishly. “I’m gonna go brush my teeth. Thanks, man.” He smiled, giving Vaughn a quick, tight hug before standing up. He stretched, brushing the ceiling with his palms. Vaughn was on his feet shortly after, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“So… Continue as normal?” Vaughn queried. “Space-Netflix and chill? I mean, I’d hate for this pizza to go to waste.”

Rhys nodded in approval. “That sounds great right now. I feel like shit. Probably look like shit too, what with the puking and the crying. So maybe sex is off the menu tonight. Sorry, man.”

Vaughn shrugged goodnaturedly and flexed his fingers. “No problem. I’ll pick a movie, you go brush your teeth.”

* * *

At 9:45 PM, Rhys found himself lounging on his couch, stretching his legs out onto a coffee table littered with pizza boxes and a half-empty bottle of soda that he and Vaughn had been sharing. Vaughn himself was sitting at his left, legs folded beneath him as he grinned at the onscreen spectacle, a science fiction movie from millennia ago, from before anyone had dared to live somewhere other than the small, forgotten, blue-green planet labelled in the history books as “Earth.” When it had been made, computer programming was in its infancy and lasers were considered to be the stuff of magic, and the movie centred upon some whimsical flight of fancy wherein someone was transported via laser into cyberspace, where computer programs were represented by actors running around a gaudy animated polygonal environment whilst wearing leotards decorated with neon-coloured circuit lines.

It was a movie they’d both watched a thousand times in college in situations that echoed the present one, where snacks and carbonated (usually alcoholic) beverages gave way to lengthy debates over what purpose a gladiatorial combat simulation served in a company server devoted to research and development, as well as how the primitive early-computer-era hard drives even had the capacity to store the sheer quantity of genetic and conscious data that was an entire human being- bomber jacket and all. Rhys knew there were hard drives on Helios the size of a sandwich that were advertised as having the capacity to store an entire human consciousness and still have room left over for the entire criterion collection, but he sincerely doubted that even they had the capacity to store the rest of a human body. Rhys smiled and nestled against the couch’s stiff foam filling that barely disguised the rigid frame inside it. This was the life.

Vaughn shifted in his seat and cleared his throat, snapping Rhys out of his reverie. “Uh… Is it still okay if I crash here tonight?”

“Oh, of course, dude.”

Vaughn half smiled, scratching the back of his head. “Okay. I guess… couch?”

“Well… I didn’t exactly specify that you had to sleep on the couch, did I?” He said in a honeyed voice, gazing at Vaughn through half-mooned eyes.

“So… sharing a bed?” Vaughn questioned, a pink flush starting in his cheeks. Rhys felt his own cheeks go warm in sympathy as his heart rate climbed suddenly to a rocketing speed.

“Well… yeah.” Rhys answered, tone dropping to an unsure stammer. He clutched anxiously with his robotic hand at his fleshy upper arm. “I mean, I don’t really feel like having sex tonight… But all the same, I don’t really wanna sleep alone either. So… you can sleep in my bed tonight. With me. But only if you want to, I’m just floating that little option out there. Feel free to turn it down.” Rhys cleared his throat and shied away. He felt Vaughn scooch closer to him, resting his head on Rhys’s shoulder.

“That sounds nice,” he purred, snuggling against his friend’s left shoulder like an affectionate, bespectacled kitten. Rhys’s prosthetic hand released its grip on his arm with a quiet whirr, and he slowly lowered his head to rest atop Vaughn’s own. The corner of his mouth instinctively ticked upwards as he began to settle into the pleasant and unfamiliar feeling of finally not feeling so guilty about finding his best friend cute.

 _Yeah,_ he thought. _That does sound nice._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THIS FIC WAS DEAD.
> 
> Okay, ferreal, this fic took so goddamn long to write you guys. Whilst I must postpone the "chill" until the next chapter, I just really wanted to do this internal conflict between reconciling one's sexual attraction to an individual with one's lack of romantic attraction to said individual justice. It's a conflict that almost never crops up in anything, and I think it definitely needed a day in the sun. Sometimes, your boner compass and your heart compass are pointed in completely different directions, and that's okay.
> 
> Thanks so so much to schrodingers_rufus and to tumblr user juk3box-h3ro for being the awesome sounding boards and editors for this project. And many thanks to you guys, yes, you, the readers, for actually, y'know, reading it and being awesome. Without you all, this project would never have happened.


	3. Sex Toys and Chill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rhys and Vaughn /finally/ have sex.

and then they banged 

the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> APRIL FOOLS. 
> 
> But for real though I didn't forget- I'm still writing this when i can find the time/inspiration between my new job. It's... guys, it's really fucking long. There's a LOT of sex scene. Good? maybe. I don't know, I've never actually written smut.

**Author's Note:**

> Many, MANY props to schrodingers-rufus for betaing this fic for me and providing its title. You rock. And to you, dear reader, for witnessing the shitshow that is the rest of it.


End file.
